


Midnight Comforts

by The_Dark_Elf



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Gen, Nightmares, Platonic Cuddling, azriel is a great brother, feyre is healing still okay, how do you tag?, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 13:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20116066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dark_Elf/pseuds/The_Dark_Elf
Summary: Azriel comes to the townhouse to find Feyre having a nightmare.





	Midnight Comforts

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me in a fit of frustration over the lack of inner circle family moments, and I wrote it in an hour on my phone. All mistakes are my own.

Azriel didn’t know what he was doing in the townhouse: Rhys and Cassian has gone to one of the camps in the north, and Mor had finally urged Elaine out for a night on the town. Only Feyre and he had remained, wishing for a quiet night. 

The shadows curled around him, urging and pushing him through the front door and into the main room, and he stood, listening to every whisper of shadow in the house until he heard it: a sobbing scream echoed through the house full of agony and rage. Azriel was running up the stairs before it had even connected in his mind that it had been Feyre’s voice screaming through the house with centuries worth of pain. Truthteller glinted in the light of his siphons as he burst through the door to the room Feyre shared with his brother only for him to still.

In the bed Feyre was twisting against the sheets, sobbing as she strained against nothing. His shadows darted through the room, confirming what he already knew. Nothing attacking. She was safe. It was her own mind that hurt her now. 

He was grateful she slept in Rhys’s shirts on the few nights he was away; he didn’t think he would be able to look at either her or his brother if she had been bare or, possibly worse, in one of the lacy scraps he could see spilling from the riot of silk and colors that was their closet. Silent as his shadows, Azriel moved through the room only stopping when he knelt at the bed beside her. 

“Feyre, wake up.” He breathed, hardly louder than her whimpers. Her head turned toward his voice, another choked noise spilling from her lips, but her eyes didn’t open. Azriel huffed and looked over her face, chest aching at the pain there. She was still so young, and the pain there was enough to last her twenty one centuries rather than the few short years she had lived. 

“Feyre!” His voice was louder now, a command to the soldier she had been forced to become in a war that wasn’t her own. 

It worked. Those blue-green eyes snapped open, and one of her hands flew out, flame sparking in her palm before she recognized the shadows curling over her wrists. She eased herself into a sitting position and drew her legs up to her chest. 

“Hey, Az. I didn’t know you were here tonight.” 

Azriel hated how her voice trembled. Hated the shiver to her power as a gust of wind pushed the window open across the room. Hated how her watery eyes refused to meet his. He wanted nothing more than to storm the Spring Court and take a very long time paying Tamlin back for every moment of agony she had suffered both at his orders and through his negligence. But she would not forgive him for his pity, so instead he stood and offered her a hand.

Words were not his strength, not after decades spent without books or conversation in his dark hell, but they had not always been hers either in those long years of starving and fighting to survive. Perhaps that is why it was so much easier for them to understand each other’s moods rather than the others in their court. Her calloused hand - a hunter’s hand, a painter’s hand, a soldier’s hand - dropped in his, and Azriel eased his High Lady up and down the hall and stairs. He didn’t stop until they were in the kitchen where he turned and boosted her up onto the counter with a small smile. 

Her laugh eased that part of him that demanded he storm the Spring Court and make all of them feel her agony. Feyre had forgiven Tamlin, but Azriel could never forget her gaunt frame and haunted eyes when she came to them, or the shadows that had haunted Mor when she had claimed her that first time. 

Scarred hands moved fluidly, pulling down two mugs and set about heating water. He stopped with his hand over a box of tea that he had reached for without conscious thought. His favorite, the dark woody tea had shared first with his mother then with Rhysand’s was toward the front from the last time he had been here for dinner. 

“Would you-“ He started, only to be interrupted by her. 

“Your tea is fine, Az. You should know that I like it after I stole your cup yesterday before you had gotten through half.” 

He chuckled, “Between you and Mor it will be a wonder if any of us have a full drink again.” Not that he and his brothers minded. If Feyre was stealing sips from his tea, or snatching fruits from Cassian’s plate, or taking half of Rhys’ dessert after devouring her own it meant she was eating something. It meant that she would never be that wraith they had met in the beginning. Azriel would give her everything: all of his tea, his food, anything to keep her out of that emptiness. He knew his brothers would do the same for her, even if she wasn’t Rhysand’s mate or their High Lady. Somehow she had slipped into all of their hearts and become part of their family. A little sister that could give as good as she got from any of them. One that gave them paintings and brought color into the cabin. 

When he had two cups steeping, Azriel sent them floating into the living room on a blue tinged wind with half a thought. Feyre’s confused expression soon broke into a squawk of laughter as he tossed her over one shoulder. Careful to clamp an arm over her thighs to keep her stolen shirt from riding up her thighs.

“Brute!” She cackled, playfully smacking at his back without any force behind it. He had no doubt that if she had wanted she could escape him - he and Cassian had seen to that themselves - but she let him carry her to the couch and drop her on her back with a bounce. 

A quiet smile was tugging at his lips when he turned to grab the throw tossed carelessly over her favorite armchair from earlier that evening if the book on the table next to it said anything. He tossed it back at her too fast for her to react and laughed when it hit her square in the face with another offended squawk. Her mischievous smirk was his only warning before a burst of wind knocked him off balance and sent him back onto the couch in a clumsy sprawl. She bounced again as his weight hit the cushions, and her cackling helped to ease the rest of the rage in his gut. His High Lady. His sister. Safe and laughing and playful as she slapped at his arm softly before settling against his side with the blanket draped around her shoulders like a cape. 

His arm curled around her, and Azriel shifted until she could rest comfortably against his side. “Do you want to talk about it?” A simple offer, one that would always be open to her now and every moment after. Whenever she was healed enough to come to him, even if that was centuries from now. 

Feyre was quiet for a long moment, so long that Azriel thought she would never speak, then a star-flecked ribbon of darkness floated over their tea and Feyre’s hands wrapped around the warm cup. It was moments like this, with her power a mere shadow in the dark, that he remembered how small she was. Feyre stood toe to toe with the worst bastards the Cauldron had conjured, him and his brothers included, without flinching. It was easy to forget that she barely reached the top of their chests on a good day.

“It’s a long story.”

Azriel chuckled and pressed a quick kiss to her hair. “You’re not old enough yet to have long stories. Now if Rhys had said that I would dive headfirst into the Sidra; that bastard could ramble for hours.” Her smile was soft, but without the shadows that haunted it all too often, and she fussed over the throw until it covered them both before starting. 

And so, curled together on the couch with their tea warming their hands and throats, they talked. 

-

Morning light spilled through the windows when Rhys finally stepped into the townhouse, but instead of the usual welcome chaos of their home his quick scan of the home showed two sleeping minds. His mate and brother, the two earliest risers in their court, were still asleep in the living room. On silent feet he walked through the house, unwilling to wake the two lightest sleepers until he got a good look at them himself. When he found them, he leaned against the doorframe with a small smile. 

Azriel was sprawled back across the couch, one wing draped over the side and the other curled over him and the small form curled on his chest. Feyre’s wild hair was spread over her face in a nest that he knew he would be spending hours straightening out for her else she get frustrated and try to rip it from her head. 

Azriel‘s eyes opened a heartbeat later - his shadows curling around his ears to alert him of another’s presence - only to catch his own and relax back into the cushions again. A quick prodding of his brother’s shield, and Rhysand saw the night before: the nightmare, the tea, the offer, but nothing of what they spoke of. Typical Azriel, protecting her secrets even from Rhysand himself. Rhys smiled and tipped his head in thanks. For watching over his mate. For loving her as a sister. For keeping her confidence. 

Feyre hummed softly before she pushed up on Azriel’s chest until he let his wing fall back and his arms slipped from around her. Her eyes blinked slowly as she took in the light and both of them watching her only to crinkle at the corners when she offered them a sleepy smile. 

“Well Az if you ever get tired of your role as spymaster I would always accept you as my personal couch.” 

They laughed, she laughed, and everything was right again.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work posted online in... six years and my first written for ACOTAR. Feel free to drop suggestions for future one-shots! Con crit is appreciated.


End file.
